2015 - Volume 2
aliveguide... Do you know a story that needs to be told? Have photos you’d like to share? Curious about something in our church and faith community? Let us know! We want to create the magazine YOU want to read! Sandy Huse, Communications Director shuse@mcfarlinumc.org 405-321-3484 ext. 116
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Holy Week Services & Events
McFarlin UMC PO Box 6390 Norman, OK 73070
Dear McFarlin Family, As we journey through Lent together in our series, “Following in the Footsteps of Jesus,” it is clear that Jesus calls each of us to reach out to others in love. And because our wise God has given each of us different gifts and hearts, our way of serving others may look very different from someone else’s. This diversity makes McFarlin such a strong witness in the world, both in our own neighborhood and in places far away. In this month’s issue of ALIVE, we’ll look at all kinds of outreach and mission efforts our McFarlin family members are undertaking, from caring for brothers and sisters in our church through Alzheimer’s Caregivers, to nurturing local children and families through McFarlin’s Day Care and Children’s Day Out. Just outside our walls, we are changing lives through utilities assistance and food pantry programs, which help ensure our neighbors have fresh food and warm, lighted homes. Further from our doors, McFarlin youth and adults traveled to South Texas this month for our 22nd Annual Spring Break Mission. They spent a week helping build a home from the ground up and repairing ten others for families who struggle daily. Across the sea, in Haiti, we have sent teams for the last couple of years to meet the medical needs of the poorest of the poor, and we look forward to our next trip in May when missionaries will offer medical and dental care, and provide training for school teachers in Source-au-Philippe and nearby villages. From caregiving and construction, to teaching and nursing or offering essentials like food or utilities, our gifts, God’s gifts, can be world-changing. I thank God that McFarlin members reach out in love to God’s children in our church, in our community and beyond. But I am getting ahead of myself. For now, as we follow in Christ’s footsteps during Lent, we reflect and serve with a solemnity befitting people aware of our shortcomings and the grace we so desperately need. In this issue of ALIVE, you’ll see dates we can anticipate together as we approach Holy Week at the end of March. With traditions of remembrance and, eventually, Easter joy, this very holy season makes me feel deeply grateful for our McFarlin family.
www.mcfarlinumc.org
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PLUS... DON’T MISS ALL THIS
Changing Lives that Change the World
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Children’s Day Out & Day Care
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Understanding Alzheimer’s
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McFarlin Food Pantry
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Following my dreams...
Pastor Linda
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Holy Week Services & Events
MaundyThursday Service with Communion April 2nd at 7:30 PM in Fenn Hall
Good Friday Service April 3rd at 7:30 PM in the Sanctuary Reflections on and music from J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion
Children’s Easter Egg Hunt April 4th from 11 AM -1 PM on the North Lawn and in Fenn Hall
Easter Sunday Worship Services
The ways we live out our mission to Change Lives that Change the World can be as varied as the membership of McFarlin. The opportunities we face each day demand that we make a choice to step up and step out, all in hope that the world becomes a better place. Our “world” can be our neighborhood, our school, our place of employment, or wherever we find ourselves on a daily basis. Our “world” is close to home, and it is far away. For 22 years, McFarlin’s world has included the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Northern Mexico during spring break. For 17 spring breaks, teams of students and adults served in Mexican communities Nuevo Progreso, Rio Bravo, Reynosa, and La Posta, building cement-block casitas, church additions and a kindergarten. In 2011, we moved our efforts to the United States side of the Rio Grande Valley, where we have been repairing homes to make them safer and more weather-proof. This year, our world had a new twist during spring break as we built a home from the ground up. Two years ago the Gonzalez family was rocked to its core when their elder daughter was assaulted and strangled to death at home. To cover up their crime, the assailants burned down the family home. The mother went to live with family in Chicago, the younger daughter received a full scholarship to University of Texas Pan-American, and the son left to serve in the military, and now is stationed in Afghanistan. When our pre-build team of adults arrived on March 6, the site where the Gonzalez house once stood was vacant. When our students left the Rio Grande Valley on March 21, a new home stood ready to nuture new hopes, new dreams and a new future. If you ask anyone who has traveled on a spring break mission you would most certainly hear them talk about the families they encountered as they built and repaired homes. Within relationships that have been created is where changes take place and where the world becomes a little better. None of what we have done over the past 22 spring vacations would have been possible if the people of McFarlin didn’t sacrificially give to our Fund A Project. These funds enable us to change lives and change the world in very meaningful ways. In coming weeks you will hear many stories of changed lives as a result of the 22nd Annual Spring Break Mission. But let us remember that in the world there are many, many opportunities to change lives; you can travel to the Rio Grande Valley to do it, or you can just walk down the street!
Note: These worship times are for Easter Sunday only. April 5th Sunrise Service – 6:30 AM on the South Lawn April 5th Sanctuary Services – 8 AM, 9:30 AM and 11 AM April 5th Lifeline Service – 11 AM in Fenn Hall 44
For childcare at our services and events, please contact Kristy Varva at kvarva@mcfarlinumc.org
Changing Lives that Change the World
Thankful to be part of this Church! Scott Meier, Director of Student Ministries www.mcfarlinumc.org
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McFarlin Children’s Programs Serve Norman Families with Love!
Bridges is a Norman organization helping homeless teens become high school graduates. This month, we invited Bridges Executive Director Debra Krittenbrink to tell us how a growing partnership with the McFarlin Community Outreach Team is changing lives.
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Changing Lives that Change the World
On the morning of her 18th birthday, Lydia lay in her bed, waiting to find out how her family would celebrate the momentous occasion. She looked up excitedly as her mother said, “Lydia, you’re 18 today.” “I know!” she interrupted. “Yes, you’re an adult today. You have half an hour to pack your things and move out of my house. It’s time you were on your own,” said her mom. In a daze, Lydia loaded all she could into her car, which became her bedroom, her study hall, and her kitchen for the next two weeks. She continued going to school, too embarrassed to tell anyone but her good friends what had happened. One day, while she was cleaning up in the school bathroom, a counselor came in to ask her what was wrong. The story tumbled out, and she was referred to Bridges to live. She joined the 19 other students on campus, who, due to parental mental illness, homelessness, violence, incarceration, or other reasons, are also teenagers living alone. The goal of Bridges is to provide resources for homeless high school students so that they can graduate high school and go to college if they choose. In return, we require maintenance of passing grades and attendance, mature behavior, and a job to pay bills. We accomplish this goal with the hand-in-hand support of the Norman Public School System and related social service agencies, the help of our community and churches like McFarlin, a focused board, and lessons learned from 20 years of experience. Our staff takes students to the doctor and dentist and signs them up for Soonercare and food stamps. Students also see trained trauma counselors, and get mentors trained to provide another layer of support by connecting weekly to work on school, social issues, and job shadows. We also offer savings accounts and scholarships. Together, these resources enable us to nurture our students and help them graduate high school and discover careers that will make them self-sufficient adults. The McFarlin Community Outreach Team has generously stepped in to give our aging campus a facelift. They have offered to provide labor and materials for three projects: installing flooring in the apartments, purchasing and hanging curtain rods, and building a storage shed. Materials for each apartment will be about $850 and McFarlin will provide the labor. Installation will be done as students move out, and may take up to a year. Our storage was displaced to install an above-ground saferoom, so we now rent a PODS container for $150/month. Hence, a shed for storage, and finally, window curtains because the existing blinds don’t screen the light very well. McFarlin would purchase curtain rods at $100 per apartment for 16 apartments, and install them. With your assistance, our students will be able to graduate and break the cycle of poverty.
Our Children’s Day Out and Day Care programs view our mission of Changing Lives that Change the World as an opportunity to work with and for our community’s families to make a real impact. We receive calls and emails frequently about how children are sharing God’s love with their families and friends through lessons they learn in our weekly sanctuary time and Christian-themed activities. Children, parents and teachers serve families’ basic needs through multiple outreach events throughout the year. Opportunities to give back on a personal level are where we really see the love of Christ shine in our program participants. Recently one family’s young child underwent cranial surgery and needed to borrow a rocking chair for a couple months. We reached out to other Day Care families with this need, and within hours they donated a rocker. We also asked for volunteers to make meals for the family for the two weeks following the procedure. This family was so appreciative and felt so loved by those that gave of themselves and their belongings. The mother asked to be added to the meal list so she could give back to others in the future, as well as for information on membership at McFarlin. What a blessing to be part of such life-changing moments! Changing Lives that Change the World comes to life for this family and others each day as McFarlin ministers to them and their children. Blesssings,
Laura Beth Woods, Day Care Director
Amy Watson, Children’s Day Out Director
www.mcfarlinumc.org
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McFarlin is Walking and Talking to Help Cure Alzheimer’s How many of you can name several deadly diseases that have been eradicated or controlled in the past 100 years? A few are polio, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, small pox. Then think of the ones that have now become treatable: cancer, heart disease, AIDS. But there is still a killer on the loose, and its ugly name is Alzheimer’s disease. There is no cure, no preventive measure, and no known reason why or how it picks its targets. Today people are living to their hundreds, and people in their 60s, 50s, even 40s, are being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. And it can be a death sentence. Some people live with the disease for only one year while many others live with it for 15 or more years. This debilitating disease robs one’s abilities to think and function normally. Many no longer know how to eat or drink. Often patients cannot work, and family members must monitor patients so they won’t endanger themselves or others. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in America, and the U. S. surgeon general expects it to be the nation’s next epidemic.
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Changing Lives that Change the World
My friend, Jim, asked me to stop by his house one day after work a year ago because he had a problem. When I arrived he had his large wall calendar on the table. I asked, “Okay, what’s the problem?” He asked me when his housekeeper was coming to his house. I told him she had been there the week before and would be back in four weeks. I counted it on the calendar and showed him the date. I stated, “See? You already have her name on that date.” He asked, “How did you come up with that date?” I counted it again and
again; he just couldn’t grasp how I got to four weeks. “Why don’t you count across the calendar, or diagonally? Why down each time?” he asked. Every day that week I worked with him on this problem for 30 minutes to an hour. He never understood and finally decided that I could just tell him when she would be at his house. This man had been a U.S. Air Force pilot for over 20 years, a builder and a licensed electrician, but now couldn’t figure out the calendar. That was my first sign that something was wrong with his thinking. One morning he left me a message saying he had been locked out of his housing addition and had had to spend the night in his car in the Sam’s Club parking lot. I called his son who lived in northwest OKC, and together we spent most of the day explaining to Jim that he couldn’t live alone anymore, nor could he drive. I explained how lucky he was that someone trustworthy found him and helped him home from Sam’s. It could have been a different story. Jim’s children helped him move into an assisted living center close to his son’s house an hour from Norman. Every week I would go and spend part of a day with him and usually take him someplace to eat. One day he looked at me and asked, “Carol, what is wrong with me?” I answered, that he had a disease of the mind causing him not to remember some things. He asked, “Is it contagious,because I would not want you to get it?” I assured him it wasn’t. Then he asked, “Will my children get it?” I told him no one knows, in some families it is in the genes, but for some patients it is an isolated case. Then he asked, “What can we do to cure it?” That’s when I had to tell him “Nothing. There is nothing that we can do except enjoy the time we are together.” A few weeks later Jim was too weak to go out to eat and we ate in his dining room. Later he was so weak he was using a walker. After we ate, I pulled the walker to the table, placed his hands on the chair arms, then told him to push up and stand up and then I’d move his chair back and turn him to the walker. He looked up at me with all the innocence of a child and his beautiful sky-blue eyes. He asked, “What does ‘push up’ and ‘stand up’ mean? I don’t know what I’m to do.” Somehow I helped him stand and we made it back to his apartment. A few weeks later Jim was gone. Every September the Alzheimer’s Association sponsors a walk to help find a cure. I have walked every year for our McFarlin Alzheimer’s support group, but now I have a personal reason for walking, and I need your support. Yes, we ask for money, but I am also asking you to speak out, tell people about Alzheimer’s. Only if we work together and inform others can we stop this killer. Alzheimer’s disease has to be stopped before it takes one more of our loved ones. Let’s stop it together! Carol Dean Schreiner, Director of Senior Adult Ministries
www.mcfarlinumc.org
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McFarlin Food Pantry... McFarlin Food Pantry has served 3,191 people since December 2014. That’s more than 1,500 bags of groceries for people in the Norman area. According to the World Health Organization Food Security is a worldwide concern related to three measures: 1. 2. 3.
Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis. Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Food use: appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation. The World Food Summit defines Food Security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”
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According to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma 13.9 percent (or approximately 35,000 people) of our county’s population is considered food insecure. In addition, 43 percent of hungry county residents are not eligible for supplemental nutrition assistance programs Changing Lives that Change the World and rely solely on pantries like ours.
addresses Food Security one family at a time. While all these numbers are important and help us to understand the scope of both the need for relief and the call to respond, they are not the names and faces of those we help. I want to share with you a thank you card McFarlin recently received: Dear McFarlin Methodist Food Pantry, (I) came in with Mrs. W last Thursday. Everyone was so kind and helpful and cheerful. Thanks so much! Mrs. W is poor, diabetic, had hip surgery and her husband is Type I diabetic. It is trying to kill him. He delivers flyers as a contract laborer. (He) does not make much money but faces a big tax bill. You helped their finances with your generous food pantry and met a real need. I just stood there and watched God work. The man who took the ID’s was great and the woman giving out the food was exceptionally kind and good natured. We appreciate your help so much! You ministered to some very poor people; poor in pocket and in spirit. You are ministering to believers and unbelievers alike. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven! Blessed are those who show mercy, for mercy shall be shown to them! You are invited to this kingdom work too! Every week McFarlin members join to work against food insecurity in the Norman area. Please contact Committee Chair Nancy Koplowitz at nhkoplowitz@gmail.com for ways to get involved. Shyloe O’Neal, Associate Pastor, Congregational Care and Life www.mcfarlinumc.org
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Following My Dreams...
As McFarlin’s third mission trip to Haiti approaches this May, Haiti mission team member Nancy Koplowitz takes a few moments here to tell us about the call to service that God has placed on her heart.
On my first trip to Haiti with the McFarlin Medical team last year, a chance conversation at the end of the trip changed my mission in life. My second trip to Haiti last year, with a Michigan Volunteers in Mission (VIM) education team, put my new mission into sharper focus. When I travel for the third time to Haiti on our May VIM medical/education trip, I hope to finally have a plan I can implement with God's and McFarlin's help. During the three days we are working in Source-au-Philippe I will be speaking to the teachers and principal of the little Methodist school. I will also be speaking to the superintendent of schools of the island of Gonave and the district supervisor of the Methodist church of Gonave. I want to find out what kind of training would be beneficial to them. What materials can we bring that would have a lasting impact on their teaching? I want to become their partner. We are bringing with us a few materials and fun activities for the kids, but my main focus will be making future plans. When I return to Norman, I hope I can lead an educational team back to Haiti that will make a difference in the teachers' and children's lives. I hope some of you want to go with me, more than once! I dream of this being an annual mission trip for McFarlin. I dream of making trainers out of the teachers we are working with so they can train other teachers. I dream of giving scholarships to teachers to attend a three-month teacher training in Port-au-Prince. I dream of children having better lives because we cared enough help their dreams come true. 12 12
Changing Lives that Change the World
New Members
Chris Baumgartner & Melissa Baughman
Janet Reinish January 4, 2015
Drew Howard January 8, 2015
January 2, 2015
Chuck & Jean Wilson January 17, 2015
Helen Copp
February 15, 2015
Baptisms
Vernon Ellis Hooks IV, son of Vernon & Katie December 20, 2014
Jude Hark Barnes, son of Daylon & Sarah; Miah Ann Harkness, Jade Marie Harkness & Cody James Schaeffer, children of Jonathon & Crystal Harkness January 11, 2015
Winter Diane Roberts, daughter of Michael & Jennifer February 14, 2015
www.mcfarlinumc.org
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McFarlin Egg Hunt
Spring Growth Groups
and Family Picnic Saturday, April 4th from 11 AM to 1 PM
RAIN or SHINE
2015
Live Music • Sno-Cones • Inflatables Face Painting • Easter Bunny • Tons of FUN!! Bring friends and family, a picnic lunch and a basket to gather eggs. Egg hunts start at 11 AM and Noon Egg hunts arranged by age group and for those with special needs.
Surprised By Hope | Sundays @ 9:40 AM | Library | Apr 12 – May 17
Wondering how to continue pursuing God after Lent and Easter? Consider joining a six-week growth group being offered just after Easter by Michael Andres, our executive minister. Participants will consider and discuss N.T. Wright’s study, “Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.” While Christians usually think of the future in terms of heaven, God’s promised reality is far greater: a new heaven and a new earth, a whole new creation. Once you grasp this biblical vision of God’s future, it will transform your understanding of life in the present. We’ll meet at 9:40 AM on Sundays, from April 12 to May 17. For more information, please contact Michael at (405) 321-3484 or at mandres@mcfarlinumc.org.
Gear Up for VBS
June 21-24, 6 PM - 8:30 PM Register at www.mcfarlinumc.org
Spiritual Parenting | Sundays @ 9:40 AM | Rm. 320 | Apr 12 - May 17 In April and May, Kristy Varva, our director of Children’s Ministries will lead a six-week Spiritual Parenting growth group designed to empower parents to be the primary nurturers of their children’s faith. The study, by Michelle Anthony, is DVDand discussion-based. Families will transform as they learn how to create space for God-encounters in everyday life. For more information, please contact Kristy at (405) 321-3484 or at kvarva@mcfarlinumc.org. 14 14
Changing Lives that Change the World
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McFarlin Memorial United Methodist Church 419 S University at Apache, PO Box 6390 Norman, OK 73070 405.321.3484 www.mcfarlinumc.org
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ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
Sunday worship Sanctuary Worship 8:30 & 10:55 AM Lifeline Worship in Fenn Hall 10:55 AM Sunday School for All Ages 9:40 AM